How To Crush UGC: The Obvi Guide to Better Creator Content

Hey everyone,

It’s time for another bite to chew on. 

We know we talk a lot about influencer marketing these days. 

It has become central to our acquisition efforts at Obvi.

Thing is, the industry has come a long way since the early days of influencer seeding.

You know the old…  

“Send product → ask for a video → wait”

That’s why we spend a lot of time and effort optimizing our UGC programs. 

From our processes for sourcing creators to testing new tools that make collecting UGC faster, easier, and better. 

Today we’re going to take you through some of the nitty gritty tactics we use to get the best quality content from our influencer marketing.

On the Menu

• First  up - Inspiration

• Next - Concepting

• Finally - Briefing

Tool of the week

Friction kills execution.

If you’re a busy founder or operator, you know that motivation and momentum can lag when there are too many steps to take or too many hurdles to jump. 

That’s the major challenge for DTC brands, especially when it comes to influencer management these days. 

Sure, UGC is VITAL. 

But the admin around connecting with creators, seeding product, and collecting content can be a nightmare. 

That leads to one of two things:

❌ Either your UGC process is slow and painful, limiting growth.

❌ Your process is costing too much in terms of time and money to execute.

Either way, we think you should check out JoinBrands. 

They connect you instantly with Influencers across every major social platform from TikTok to Youtube. You can even request videos for your Amazon store or Shopify PDP’s. 

JoinBrands works with over 100k US-based creators and they can help you develop high-quality, scalable campaigns in minutes, rather than hours or days. 

How fast can you get content? 80% of JoinBrands creators upload their videos within a week. Say goodbye to waiting months for that unboxing vid you requested. 

Best of all? They have a free tier to help you get started.

We recently added JoinBrands to our influencer/UGC tech stack and it has made our team’s life a lot easier when it comes to vetting creators and collecting content.

And we’re lucky enough to have dedicated staff, multiple tools, plus a good sized budget.

But if you’re a smaller brand with big ambitions and you’re trying to get level up your UGC program, we definitely think you should give JoinBrands a try.

Step one - Inspiration

Everyone is familiar with the classic (and still effective!) kind of UGC - the testimonial. A person looks into the camera and talks about why they like the product. 

Nice and simple.

This came from the early days of self-publishing and social media when people first started to share videos on the internet. 

It works because it mimics irl word-of-mouth recommendations. It’s content that can kill as organic too - Especially if the influencer commands a lot of trust from their audience. 

But, like we said, the game has evolved. There’s a lot more you can do with UGC these days. 

Before we get to the tactics, let’s take a step back and think about the fundamentals of attention, engagement, and entertainment. 

After all, the point of creator content is to appeal to your target demo so they’ll stop scrolling and engage with your ad. 

When it comes to paid media, your true competition isn’t other brands - it’s all the other stuff battling for your audience’s attention. 

Your temptation is to first think about messaging that illustrates the value of your product, BUT -  

The best content does this while adding value. 

Narrate, entertain, educate 

If you can entertain by hitting the key fundamental notes of storytelling, comedy, and education, then your ad stops feeling like an ad. 

Instead, you’re adding something positive to your audience’s experience (rather than interrupting it.) 

Content like that gets high engagement, low CPMs, and sometimes viral spread. 

Here are some helpful frameworks you can use for inspiration:

Storytelling - 7 types of stories 🎭

• Overcoming The Monster

• Rags To Riches

• The Quest

• Voyage & Return

• Comedy

• Tragedy

• Rebirth

You don’t have to write the next Beowulf or The Odyssey to make good content. 

Just try to understand why these types of tales appeal to practically everybody, then map one of those story arcs to your product and how it impacts your customers. 

People love to learn about triumph, transformations, overcoming obstacles, and even dire warnings. 

Can you frame your product's benefits and value props using these techniques? 

Comedy - 7 types of humor 🎭

• Satire

• Parody

• Spoof

• Deadpan

• Slapstick

• Wordplay

• Observational

Funny creative is one of the most universal kinds of content.

Memes are a great example of content that combines many of these types of humor (wordplay, observational, satire, parody) in a concise package.

That’s why the best ones spread like wildfire. 

Dollar Shave Club took on a giant incumbent in Gilette with their deadpan Youtube ad → 

Their now famous 1:33-long video has over 28 million views. 

(Related - Dollar Shave Club sold to Unilever for $1 billion.)  

That’s the power of comedy.

Education - 4 ways to inform 👨🏽‍🏫

• Curiosity gap

• Credibility and authority

• Reframe to surprise

• Trivia

Many people think education = boring. 

However educational content is one of the most consumed creative forms on social media. 

In fact, many of the biggest influencers in the world built their audiences by simply sharing useful or interesting information. 

Now, you can’t just blast facts at people - you need some kind of hook. 

Examples: 

Hint that you know something that the audience doesn’t. Then slowly reveal the answer (curiosity gap). 

Or reframe some basic fact into something more surprising and relatable (reframe to surprise). 

“Did you know it would take over 3.5 million football fields to reach the moon from the earth?”

You can also share information from a trusted authority to increase credibility.

Or simply surprise & delight people with unique trivia. 

tl/dr → 

When considering inspiration, think about some of your favorite books, movies, and social content. Consider:

✅ Why is it appealing to you? 

✅ What makes it stick? 

✅ How do I implement these fundamentals in my own creative?

Next step - concepting

Alright, you’re officially inspired.

Now it’s time to get down to conceptualization. 

What angles, structures, and frameworks can you use to get your message across?

At this point, consider what kind of emotional angle you can use to get your audience engaged.

Are you trying to make someone feel… 

• Stronger, smarter, more confident? 💪

• Sexier, more attractive? 😍

• Less stressed, more relaxed? 😌

• Able to attain higher social status? 😎

• Relief from fear or anxiety? 😥

Etc. 

Now let’s talk about script frameworks.

These are technically only limited by your imagination, but here’s some we like:

• Review/testimonial (the OG)

• Problem-agitate-solution (maybe the most popular?)

• Unboxing/discovery (also a classic)

• Demonstration/how-to

• Personal story/transformation

• Comparison/This vs That

• Common user questions/responses

• Listicles (5 reasons I love…)

• Myth/myth correction

At this point, you should be getting close to a clear concept → 

• Storytelling/Educate → Rebirth/curiosity gap

• Emotion → Feel more confident

• Script framework → Personal story

And remember, you want your audience to feel like the hero of the content.Your product is just the pivotal thing that makes their story possible. 

Creative briefing

So you know how you’re going to use storytelling, humor, or education in your UGC creative. And you’ve developed some emotional angles and script frameworks for your ad. 

Now you need to execute. It’s time for the creative brief. 

The goal of your brief is to be as clear and concise as possible, without being too rigid. 

Remember that the creator you’re working with will usually have an understanding of what works for their channel and audience.

So you don’t want to shut them out of the process entirely. 

Here’s how we prompt for success in our briefs:

Prompt 1 - Get to the point

• Make sure you don’t overload with information right away. Shoot for about 2000 characters or less

• Develop a handful of suggested product angles or use cases

• Supply short 3-5 talking points on the product features and benefits

• Recommend 3 intro hook suggestions

• Give 3 optional calls to action 

• Relay your emotional tone/angle

• Suggest at least 5-10 hashtags for the social posting (if relevant to the channel)

Other suggestions to include: where to film the content, the lighting, and whether there will be a voiceover or text on the screen.

Your initial prompt is a quick introduction to your product and the project. 

It should establish the basics of the story and give them an understanding of how they are going to present/record the video. 

Prompt 2 - Storyboard or shot list

With the angles, hooks, CTAs, and style/setting in place, create a short storyboard. 

You don’t need to sit down and write a graphic novel for your UGC projects, but it can help to develop a shot list so your expectations and vision for the content are clear. 

We recommend a feedback and approval process at this step so that everyone is on the same page once the video is set to be recorded. 

Prompt 3 - VO or CC Script

Develop a voice-over (or closed-captioned) script that maps to your shot list and hits all the notes in the brief.

Some things to keep in mind: 

• Make sure to include emotional keywords

• The language should be clear, accessible, and natural

• Avoid jargon and buzzwords (unless you are using humor to make fun of them)

• It should sound more like a person having a dialogue than someone reading off of a teleprompter

This kind of structure helps accelerate your time from introduction to completion because it lowers uncertainty and increases transparency.

Like we said, you want to be collaborative in this process with your chosen creator…

but you don’t want to leave things so wide open that the resulting creative looks and feels nothing like your expectations. 

Now you’ve either got creative you don’t like and can’t use, or you have to go back and request a re-shoot. 

Put it all together

style UGC is great. 

And seeding for reviews works. 

But if you want to take your UGC program to the next level - 

You need to get serious about the fundamentals of storytelling, emotional hooks, script structure, and briefing.

It sounds like a lot of work. But if you can nail this process, the quality of your creative - as well as your understanding of what resonates with your audience - should go WAY up.

And when that happens, you can start to unlock new audiences, scale, and growth. 

All the best, 

Ron and Ash